The game had long since ended, yet the right-hand number on the scoreboard was still glowing, just below where the Olympic flame was still burning. On this most scorching, chilling of nights, they looked identical. Sixty-two points? At the Coliseum? By a football team other than USC? “We knew we had to get a stop, we had the attitude that we would get a stop ” said an exhausted T.J. McDonald. Nine touchdowns? In front of more than 90,000 screaming fans? By the guys who were being screamed at?

Unbuckling the mailbag: Question: USC vs. The USC: What's it going to take to have a real rivalry going? Greg Diamond Los Angeles Answer: Let's go right to the expert in this field, Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney. I think everyone would agree he has no agenda here. Swinney tweaked South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier this week for referring to Louisiana State as the real "Death Valley," knowing Clemson's home field also shares that nickname. Swinney responded there was only one "Death Valley" and only one "USC…and it's in California.

The wife cooks every year or so, and there is no exaggeration there. Every night we eat out. That's why we live in Placentia and can't afford Pacific Palisades. It's not that she can't cook; it's just that we've been married for 40 years. She thinks when someone says they are going to be treated like a queen she doesn't have to load the dishwasher. And here I thought I was marrying the dishwasher. She recently cooked some stew, and since I don't get it very often, I ate bowl after bowl and got sick.

"The Master" proves an ideal forum for themes that have haunted the work of writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. The redeeming and destructive power of religious fervor and man's desire to bend others to his will usually find their way into Anderson's films. The roots were certainly exposed in the visceral "There Will Be Blood," with its power-mad oilman and his fire-and-brimstone nemesis. But in "The Master," the filmmaker gets to the heart of the matter. With stirring performances by Philip Seymour Hoffman as the head of the Scientology-like cult the Cause, Amy Adams as his zealot wife and Joaquin Phoenix as the conflicted acolyte, "The Master" is ultimately a story of self-love and self-hate taken to extremes.

After last week's losing performance at Stanford, USC could not wait to play California on Saturday at the Coliseum. "You go win the next game," Trojans Coach Lane Kiffin said of his players' mind-set, "all of a sudden that game doesn't hurt the same. " Other than perhaps quarterback Matt Barkley, no one felt more beat up after the Stanford loss than USC's offensive and defensive lines. The offensive line, without injured center Khaled Holmes, was confused and overpowered by the Cardinal.

In one of the most famous 1st Amendment cases in U.S. history, Schenck vs. United States, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. established that the right to free speech in the United States is not unlimited. "The most stringent protection," he wrote on behalf of a unanimous court, "would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. " Holmes' test - that words are not protected if their nature and circumstances create a "clear and present danger" of harm - has since been tightened.

A poetic, almost abstract portrait of impoverished ranchers waiting for rain, Everardo Gonzalez's documentary "Drought" traces the parched terrain of northern Mexico, in the communal region called Cuates de Australia. The film provides little in the way of background or ongoing story, although a young couple's journey from prenatal ultrasound to birth provides a rough, and somewhat contrived, sense of progress. González (who served as his own cinematographer) occasionally engages his subjects from behind the camera, but he mainly observes with an outsider's patient eye. He keeps his distance, leaving room for plenty of thoughtfully framed compositions and allowing the hush of a dried-up land to predominate.

What could be more soul sapping than standing in line at the state Department of Motor Vehicles? Standing in line at the DMV in 100-degree heat on a day the agency's computers melt down. That's what drivers were greeted with Tuesday when a "connectivity issue" with AT&T and Verizon caused a computer crash at DMV offices statewide that left clerks without access to information needed for issuing licenses and vehicle registrations. At some offices, typically long lines stretched even longer, testing the patience of drivers.

LONDON - Perfect endings are for novels. Not so much for real life, or for volleyball teams and coaches. These London Olympics were to be the completion of the Hugh McCutcheon sweep, both as kind of payback for past Olympic-related indignities and as a success story with a gender twist. McCutcheon, a tall New Zealander with no hair, lots of personality and an irresistible back story, wasn't promoting any of that. He was coach of the men's U.S. Olympic volleyball team that won the gold medal four years ago in Beijing.

Why does a typical bus driver in the U.S. earn a monthly disposable income (after taxes) of $1,594, while a typical bus driver in Peru earns $325? Why does an airline pilot here bring home $4,206 a month, while a pilot in Lithuania doing what we hope is pretty much the same job with the same training makes only $1,674? (These figures, from worldsalaries.org , use 2005 dollars, adjusted for the actual purchasing power of various currencies.) Well, the explanation is obvious, isn't it?